Thursday, 15 September 2016

Sense8: Season 1

A woman named Angelica kills herself in a derelict church in
Chicago. She dies alone, but the
moment of her death is imprinted in the minds of eight other people in
different parts of the world: Riley, Will, Sun, Capheus, Wolfgang, Kala, Lito
and Nomi. From that moment onwards, those eight people can touch each other's
minds, see through their eyes, talk and share their skills and abilities. They
have become sensates, eight who can act as one, the result of a different
strand of human evolution. But their skills and abilities are jealously desired
by a mysterious organisation and the man - known only as "Whispers" -
they send to find them.

Sense8 is a
bewilderingly original, maddening, confusing TV show, refusing to stay still
and be pinned down. One second it's a melodramatic Mexican telenovella starring
a handsome action hero living in the closet. The next it's a brooding, gritty Berlin
crime drama. Then it morphs into the story of an Icelandic DJ living in London
trying to find herself, but denying the secrets of her past in Reykjavik.
The next episode might explore transgender identity issues, the next might
delve into the story of family and religious life for a young female scientist
living in Mumbai. One key storyline focuses on corporate drama in a South
Korean business that segues into a Seoul
prison drama. Another is a comedy about a cheerful Kenyan man who drives people
around Nairobi in his Jean-Claude
Van Damme-themed bus...which takes a darker turn when he invokes the ire of the
city's gangs. Finally, it's a modern Chicago
cop drama musing on race relations and family struggles, right up to the point
our cop hero runs into another sensate.

At its heart, Sense8
is a show about empathy. The ability
to step into another human being's shoes, imagine what their life is like and
try to relate to them emotionally as well as intellectually, is a vital part of
what makes us human. It's a vital tool for writers and journalists. Empathy is
vital for humans to coexist with one another and understand each other's place
in the world. The denial of empathy, the reduction of other people, other
cultures, entire other strands of humanity to cliches, to generalisations and
to "the other" is to deny their humanity and justify the
worst excesses of crime, war and bigotry.

Although a quintessential part of humanity, it's also a
nebulous concept to build a TV drama around. J. Michael Straczynski tried once
before in his epic mid-1990s space opera series Babylon 5. A subplot explored the lives of
telepaths, people who can touch each other's minds and live each other's lives,
engaging in an exchange of thoughts, ideas and emotions that
"mundanes" could never understand. It was a thoroughly intriguing
idea, but one that had to jostle for attention alongside other stories
involving war, religion and space-going teddy bears (long story). Straczynski
clearly wanted to do more with it, at one time planning a feature film spin-off
focusing on the concept, but it was never made.

A meeting with the Wachowskis, who at the time were
fresh off their own movie about human lives touching and affecting one another
across time and space (Cloud Atlas),
led to the development of Sense8.
The writers wanted to create an epic show exploring empathy, diversity, emotion
and the truth of what makes people people, their joys, their fears, their loves
and their prejudices. It was a tall order, but you're never going to accuse the
creators of The Matrix trilogy and Babylon 5 of lacking vision or ambition.

Sense8 is mostly
successful, although given there's never been anything quite like it before
it's hard to come up with a metric to measure it by. Possibly the closest
touchstone is Lost, particularly its structure and construction as it
builds up the story of eight main characters (and several supporting ones) in
tremendous depth and detail, often employing flashbacks and thematic devices so
we get to know them better. The presence of Lost actor Naveen Andrews
may be a nod to that inspiration (Straczynski was a fan of Lost, as the
producers of Lost were big fans of Babylon
5). However, the central mystery in Sense8 is nowhere near as
all-encompassing as Lost's, or Babylon
5's for that matter. Sense8 is the product of an older and more
mature writer, with Straczynski employing surprising restraint in his
storytelling. The show's mythology and main story arc are fairly low-key until
the last two episodes, with most of the season's twelve episodes instead
focusing on each character and the local struggles they are facing.

To achieve the authentic tone they wanted, the
writer-producers made a decision which I can imagine appealed massively to
Netflix's PR department, right up to the point it was costed and the budget
presented to them. Usually most "international" shows are filmed in
one city, with a mixture of set dressings and CG used to make that city look
like another. For example, Lost visited
Frankfurt, Seoul,
London, Guam
and Sydney whilst almost never
stepping foot outside of Hawaii. Sense8 has no truck with that: to film
scenes in nine different cities, the production simply filmed in those cities.
And yes, this meant the production had to move between San
Francisco, Chicago, Mexico
City, Reykjavik, London,
Berlin, Nairobi,
Mumbai and Seoul for real. This
immediately adds a huge amount of authenticity to the project. They also timed
shoots to coincide with major street festivals and events (such as San
Francisco's Pride march and religious celebrations in
Mumbai) to add a sense of scale to events. They even filmed several live
childbirths for one particularly memorable scene in the series. Although they
often look expensive, a lot of Netflix's original productions are quite
modestly-budgeted. Not so much Sense8. This is a big-budget production
that looks like a huge amount has been spent on it, but no so much that they
producers can get lazy and rely on effects or explosions to make up for good
storytelling.

The one thing Sense 8
had to nail, and nail absolutely correctly, is tonal variation. Sense8 is a comedy; it's a martial arts
movie; it's a soap opera; it's (briefly) a Bollywood musical; it's one of those
gritty crime dramas that turns into a ludicrous Jason Statham action film
halfway through. And it has to be able to move between all of those hats easily
without blowing the viewer's sense of disbelief. For this viewer, it worked
brilliantly. It even sells the tonal variation by inserting "less
serious" characters into other storylines: Wolfgang's hardcore Berlin
gangster shtick turns into outright lunatic farce when Mexican action thesp Lito
helps out, resulting in a sudden escalation into rocket launchers and comical
quips whilst gunning down an improbable number of enemies. Similarly, Lito's
story is mostly played for laughs right up until the moment when Wolfgang jumps
in to help him in a fistfight, when it suddenly becomes bloodier and more
serious. Later on, Lito's difficulties with self-identity and sexuality become
emotionally raw and real when transgender hacker Nomi relates the story of her
own difficult upbringing and coming to terms with who she wanted to be. In such
ways bonds are formed between the characters, initially in pairs and trios, and
later on between all of them.

There are several key scenes which help with this, perhaps
the best of which is the characters simply sharing a musical karaoke moment
together at the end of the fourth episode (yes, you will have 4 Non Blondes
"What's Up" rattling around your brain for the next few months as a
result). Later on the characters witness the moment of each other's birth
(featuring some actual live births filmed for the purpose) as a piano concerto
wells up in the background. Another scene has a character evading pursuit with
each of the other seven characters jumping into her body and steering her
between obstacles using their skills. Another scene has all eight of the
sensates coming together in one moment soundtracked by Sigur Ros, because Sigur
Ros automatically makes everything awesome. There's another scene in which the
gang get their wires crossed when several of them are, er, enjoying amorous
moments at the same time. And so forth.

Some of the actors are established faces: Daryl Hannah as
Angelica and Naveen Andrews as Jonas are the most immediately recognisable,
whilst Doctor Who fans will
recognise Freema Agyeman as Nomi's girlfriend Amanita. Agyeman was a reasonably
good actress on Doctor Who, but in Sense8 she's an absolute revelation.
She has some pretty challenging scenes to handle, but blows each one out of the
water.

Of the main cast, Tuppence Middleton brings both street-savvy
steel and emotional vulnerability to the role of Riley, whilst Will Gorski does
an excellent job as all-American cop Will who rapidly has his horizons
expanded. Will and Riley's connection forms both the emotional lynchpin of the
season and also results in the actual storyline being pushed along the most, so
it's helpful that their chemistry is highly convincing. Wachowski regular Doona
Bae is both highly intelligent and adept at violence as Sun, although her
character arguably suffers a little in the late season period from only showing
up when arse needs to be kicked and disappearing for long stretches (although
given her character's circumstance, perhaps that's not too surprising).

Max Riemelt is a well-known and very busy German actor, but I
wouldn't be surprised if we saw more of him in English-language productions
after Sense8. He is excellent as the
safe-cracking, Conan the Barbarian-quoting
criminal Wolfgang. Tina Desai is likewise excellent in the role of Kala,
although her storyline of family drama feels a little undercooked compared to
some of the rest. However, it comes to life later in the season when Hindu
religious tensions in Mumbai spill over and her previously underplayed
abilities with Science! are called upon to help her fellow sensates.

Ami Ameen brings tremendous, infectious energy and
enthusiasm to the story of Capheus, which probably has the widest range of
tonal variations. Ameen is excellent. Unfortunately, due to a falling-out
between Ameen and the producers, he's been recast for Season 2. Hopefully the
new actor will be able to bring a similar level of commitment and passion to
the role.

Jamie Clayton - a transgender actress playing a transgender
character - is tremendously, emotionally honest and real when playing her
character of Nomi, especially touching on storyline and character moments that
clearly derive from her real life (something Straczynski, in particular, is
renowned for). However, she struggles a little more in her role as a font of
exposition. Nomi is the group's resident "hactivist" (groan) and
starts accumulating data on what's going on by hacking the bad guys' internets
and bringing down their firewalls and doing all that TV hacking stuff. To be
fair, it's not actually that bad
compared to a lot of shows, but it feels like a bit more authenticity was
needed to overcome the IT cliches.

One of the most impressive performances comes from Spanish
actor Miguel Angel Silvestre as Lito, the closeted Mexican action hero deeply
in love with his boyfriend Hernando (a likewise accomplished performance by
Alfonso Herrera) who then reluctantly ends up with a "beard" in the
form of fellow performer Daniela (Erendira Ibarra). At first glance Lito's story
serves as the comic relief only to take a turn for the more dramatically
intense later on. In fact, this is the story that sounds the weakest on paper
but on screen ends up being one of the best. It also features a hilarious
moment where the Wachowskis completely take the mickey out of their own past
work, when it turns out even cheap Mexican action films are still stealing
ideas from The Matrix.

The performances, then, are brilliant. The writing is very
effective for the most part, moving between genres and tones with accomplished
ease. There are some monster action scenes across the season and, without their
usual infinite buckets of money and six months of CGI rendering to fall back
on, the Wachowskis resort to giving us some in-camera, practical stunts, wire
work and gunfights that are more real and convincing than anything they've done
since the original Matrix.

Where I think people will fall off or on the Sense8 bandwagon is the pacing and
structure. Sense8 is, for most of
its first season, almost an anthology show, just with characters from one story
able to help out briefly in another. The focus is clearly on each character's
own up-front problems in their own immediate vicinity. The story of what is
going on with the sensates, why they can do what they do and who is trying to
capture them unfolds very, very slowly in the background and occasional moments
of rising to the fore. This slow-burning fuse to the story can be frustrating,
but only if you view the series through the prism of "What is the answer
to this mystery?" If, on the other hand, you engage with the characters
it's not a problem. Viewer patience is eventually rewarded in the final two
episodes of the season when the ongoing mystery explodes into prominence, a
very nice car is set on fire and two of the sensates finally actually meet for
real.

Other problems? Er, the main title sequence and music are both pretty underwhelming, which is odd as Netflix actually had a great potential one they used in their trailers (the one set to Weshley Arms's cover of "Need You Tonight") and the rest of the soundtrack is pretty good. That's about it.

The first season of Sense8
(****½) is messy, weirdly-paced and sometimes misses the profundity it is
aiming for to such a degree that it is inadvertently hilarious. It's also
phenomenally well-written, often beautifully-directed (this is easily the
Wachowskis' best directing job since the first Matrix film) and
tremendously human. It's bold, experimental and offbeat in a way that none of
Netflix's other shows - no matter how well-made - are, or have even tried to
be. Sense8 shoots for the stars and perhaps falls short, but its
ambition is breathtaking, its scale epic and its characters both charming and
compelling. It is available to watch through Netflix now. Season 2, which is
wrapping up production now, will air on Netflix in early 2017.

1 comment:

What? He's been recasted? Come on, Ami Ameen as Capheus was the best thing in the first season. I much rather have more of him than the Indian doctor lady or the Icelandic Bjork wannabe.On the whole, I thought the series was pretty good but a little predictable. If the character is a woman, gay or a minority, he/she/it is a good guy. For a series that tried hard to be different, this just seems so out of place.